Cinnabar Shadows

Chapter Eleven

The faint light filtering through the roof of the little building on the killing ground was the sweetest light Cerk had seen, even though it meant he was no longer running from the templars but looking for Brother Kakzim. With that thought in his mind, the reasonably apprehensive halfling took the extra moments to refill his lamp from the oil cask inside the building and to replace the lamp on a shelf beside the door. He straightened his clothes and tidied his hair before he unlatched the door and strode onto the killing ground where, with any luck, no one would pay much attention to him.

Cerk was noticed, of course. Children were forbidden on the killing ground, and away from the forests, halflings were often mistaken for children—especially in Codesh where there were hundreds of children, but only two halflings, himself and Brother Kakzim. Most of the clansmen who warned him away from their butchering knew only that they'd found an old tunnel below the old building, but some of the clansmen knew exactly where he'd been—where he should still be—and why. Some of them had kin on what had become another killing ground.

As he rounded the top of the stairs to the abattoir gallery and their rented rooms. Cerk could see Brother Kakzim sitting at a table, making calculations with an abacus, and inscribing the results on a slab of wet clay. Usually Cerk waited until elder brother finished whatever he was doing. There was nothing usual about today. He took a deep breath and interrupted before he crossed the threshold.

"Brother! Brother Kakzim—respectfully—"

Brother Kakzim swiveled slowly on his stool. His cowl was down on his shoulders. His face, with its scars and huge, mad eyes, surmounted by wild wisps of brown hair, was terrible to behold.

"What are you doing here?"

A mind-bender's rage accompanied the question. Cerk staggered backward. He struck his head hard against the doorjamb, hard enough to dispel the rage-driven assault and replace it with pain.

"Didn't I tell you to stay with the bowls?"

Cerk pushed himself away from the door, winced as a lock of hair caught in the rough plaster that framed the wood and pulled out at the roots. "Disaster, Brother Kakzim!" he exclaimed rapidly. "Templars! A score of them, at least—"

"Paddock?"

"Yes."

A change came over Brother Kakzim while the templar's name still hung in the air. For several moments, Brother Kakzim simply didn't move. Elder brother's eyes were open, as was his mouth. One hand was raised above his head, ready to emphasize a curse. The other rested on the table, as if he were rising to his feet. But he wasn't rising. He wasn't doing anything.

Then, while Cerk held his breath, the scars on Brother Kakzim's face darkened like the setting sun, and the weblike patches in them that never quite healed began to throb.

Cerk braced himself against the doorjamb, awaiting a mind-bending onslaught that did not come. He counted the hammer beats of his own heart: one... ten... twenty... He was getting light-headed; he had to breathe, had to blink his own eyes. In that time another change had happened. Brother Kakzim had lowered his arm. His eyes had become a set of rings, amber around black, white around amber: a sane man's eyes, such as Cerk had never seen above elder brother's scarred cheeks.

"How long?" Brother Kakzim asked calmly. Cerk didn't understand the question and couldn't provide an answer. Brother Kakzim elaborated, "How long before our nemesis and his companions find their way here?" His voice remained mild.

"I don't know, Brother. They were still fighting when I ran from the cavern. I ran when I could, but I had to stop to rest. I heard nothing behind me. Perhaps they won't come. Perhaps they won't find the passage and will return to Urik."

"Wishes and hopes, little brother." Brother Kakzim picked up the clay slabs he'd been inscribing and squeezed them into useless lumps that he hurled into the farthest corner, but those acts were the only outward signs of his distress. "Our nemesis will follow us. You may be sure of it. He is my bane, my curse. While he lives, I will pluck only failure from my branches. The omens were there, there, but I did not read them. Did you see his scar? How it tracks from his right eye to his mouth? His right eye, not his left. An omen, Cerk, an omen, plain as day, plain as the night I first saw him—"

He seems sane, but he is mad, Cerk thought carefully, in the private part of his mind, which only the most powerful mind-bender could breach. Brother Kakzim has found a new realm of madness beyond ordinary madness.

"Have I told you about that night, little brother? I should have known him for my nemesis from that first moment. Elabon tried to kill him with a half-giant. A half-giant!" Brother Kakzim laughed, not hysterically as a madman might, but gently, as if at a private joke. "So much wasted time; so much time wasted. While he lives, nothing will go right for me. I must destroy him, if the BlackTree is to thrive. I must kill him. Not here. Not where he has roots. Cut off his roots! That's what we must do, little brother, cut off our nemesis at his roots!" Cerk stood still while Brother Kakzim embraced him enthusiastically. This was better than mindless rage, better than being beaten, but it was still madness.

It is madness, Cerk thought in his private place. Pure madness, and I'm part of it. I can do nothing but follow him until we reach the forest—if we reach the forest. Then I will appeal to the Elder Brethren of the Tree. I'll spill my blood on the roots, and the BlackTree will release me from my oath.

He held his hand against his chest and squeezed the tiny scars above his heart, the closest thing to prayer that a BlackTree brother had.

"Don't be sad, little brother." Brother Kakzim suddenly seized Cerk's arms. "The only failure is the last failure. No other failure lasts! Gather our belongings while I talk to the others. We must be gone before the killing starts."

Grimly Cerk nodded his obedience. Brother Kakzim released him and walked out onto the open gallery where he picked up a leather mallet and struck the alarm gong.

"Hear me! Hear me, one and all. Codesh is betrayed!"

Cerk listened as the killing ground fell silent. Even the animals had succumbed to Brother Kakzim's mind-bending might. Then elder brother began his harangue against Urik and its templars generally, and the yellow-robed villains about to emerge onto the killing ground. It was truth and falsehood so tightly interwoven that Cerk, who'd been in the cavern when the attack began and knew all the truth there was to know was drawn toward the gallery with his fists clenched and his teeth bared. He stopped himself at the door and closed it.

The closed lacquered door and his own training gave Cerk the strength to resist Brother Kakzim's voice. No one else in the abattoir would be so lucky.

He was filling a second shoulder-sack when the room began to shake. It was as if the ground itself were shuddering, and even though he knew the Dragon had been slain, Cerk's first thoughts were that it had come to Codesh to consume them all.

The scrap of white-bark—the scratched lines and landmarks that had guided him to Urik a year ago and that he'd been about to stuff into the sack—floated from Cerk's fingers. He tried to walk, but a gut-level terror kept his feet glued where they stood, and he sank to his knees instead.

"Listen to them!" Brother Kakzim exclaimed as he shoved through the door. "Failed brilliance; brilliant failure. My voice freed their rage. Yellow will turn red!" He did a joyous dance on the quaking floor, never once losing his balance. "They're tearing down the gates, setting fire to the tower. They'll all die. I give every yellow-scum death to my nemesis! Let his spirit be weighed beneath the roots!"

Stunned, Cerk realized that the shuddering of the walls and floor was the result of mauls and poleaxes biting against the abattoir walls and the base of the watchtower where the templar detachment stood guard day and night. When he took a deep breath, he could smell smoke. His feet came unglued, and he bolted for the doorway where the scent was stronger. Dark tendrils filled the stairwell. He didn't want to be in Codesh when the templars emerged from the little building.

"We're trapped!"

"Not yet. Have you gathered everything?"

The maddest eyes in creation belonged to Brother Kakzim who'd loosed a riot beneath his own feet and didn't care. Cerk grabbed the sacks as they were on the table. He threw one over each shoulder.

"I gathered everything," he said from the doorway. "It's time to leave, elder brother. Truly, it's time to leave."

When Elabon Escrissar led his hired cohort against Quraite, there had been blood, death, and injury all around. There'd been honest heroism, too. Pavek had been an honest hero when he'd fought and when he'd invoked the Lion-King's aid, but he wasn't Quraite's only hero. Ruari knew he'd done less that day and risked less, too—but he'd been at Pavek's side at the right time to give Pavek the medallion and defend him while he used it. Ruari had been proud himself that day. He was proud of himself still.

But not for today's work.

Maybe there could be no heroics when your side was the stronger side from the start, when only your own mistakes could defeat you. The war bureau templars hadn't made any mistakes, and aside from one fleeting touch of Unseen doubt, there'd been no Codeshite heroics. Two templars had gone down. Another two were walking wounded. The red-haired sergeant collected medallions from the dead and put the wounded to work guarding their prisoners.

Maybe they were the lucky ones.

Ruari wasn't sure. He'd brought the sack of balsam oil from the Urik passage and helped pour its fragrant contents into the five glamourous bowls. His mind said they were doing the right thing, the heroic thing, when they lit the purging fires. Kakzim and Elabon Escrissar had been cut from one cloth, and the Codeshites had earned their deaths as surely as the Nibenay mercenaries had earned theirs on the Quraite ramparts. Ruari's gut recalled the wounded prisoners, and as a whole, Ruari wasn't sure of anything except that he'd lost interest in heroes.

He'd have been happy to call it quits and return to Urik or, preferably, Quraite, but that wasn't going to happen. He and the priest had watched a lantern weave through the darkness at the start of the skirmish. They'd seen it disappear, and when the fighting was over they'd found a passage among the deep shadows. The wounded templars were heading home. The prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs with rope salvaged from the scaffolds, were headed for the obsidian pits. And Ruari was headed for Codesh, walking between Zvain and Mahtra, ahead of the templars and behind Pavek, the sergeant, and the priest.

They were on their way to meet another war bureau maniple. They were on their way to kill or capture Kakzim. Ruari should have been excited; instead he was nauseous— and grateful when Mahtra's cool hand wrapped around his.

The Codesh passage was much longer than the Urik passage. Caught in a grim, hopeless mood, the half-elf began to believe they were headed nowhere, that they were doomed to trudge through tight-fitting darkness forever. At last the moment came when he knew they were nearing Codesh, but it came with the faint scent of charred wood, charred meat, and brought no relief. Evidently, Ruari's companions caught the same aroma. Mahtra's grip on his hand became painful, forcing him to pull away, and Zvain whispered:

"He's burning Codesh to keep us away." The first words Ruari had heard his young friend say since they left the elven market.

"No one would do that," the priest countered.

"He'd poison an entire city," Pavek said, "and more than a city. A mere village wouldn't stop him. If it's Kakzim. We don't know anything, except that we smell something burning. It could be something else. We're late, I think, the other maniple could have finished our work for us. We won't know until we get there." Pavek might have left his shiny gold medallion behind, but he was a high templar, and when he spoke, calmly and simply, no one argued with him.

The sergeant organized them quickly into a living chain, then gave the order to extinguish the lanterns. Ruari, his staff slung over his back where it struck his head or heel at every step, fell in with the rest. It was slow-going through the dark, smoky passage, but with hands linked in front and behind there was no panic. Taller than those ahead of him and endowed with half-keen half-elf vision Ruari was the first to notice a brighter patch ahead and whispered as much to those around him. Ediyua called for a volunteer, and the first templar in the column went forward to investigate.

Ruari watched the templar's silhouette as he entered the faint light, then lost it when the man rounded the next bend in the passage. The volunteer shouted back to them that he could see an overhead opening, and screamed a heartbeat later. After giving them all an order to stay where they were, the sergeant drew her sword and crept forward. Mahtra, next in line behind Ruari, pulled her hand free for a moment, then gave it back to him. He heard several loud crunching sounds, as if she were chewing pebbles, and was about to tell her to be quiet when instead of a scream, the clash of weapons resounded through the tunnel.

Ediyua hadn't rounded the bend; Ruari could make out her silhouette and the silhouettes of her attackers, but it was someone else farther back in the column who shouted out the word, "Ambush!"

Panic filled the passage, thicker than the smoke. Discipline crumbled into pushing and shoving. Templars shouted, but no one shouted louder than Zvain:

"No! Mahtra, no!"

A tingling sensation passed from Mahtra's hand into Ruari's. It was power, though unlike anything he'd felt in his druidry. He surrendered to it, because he couldn't drive it out or fight it, and a peculiar numbness spiraled up from the hand Mahtra held. It ran across his shoulders, and down his other arm—into Pavek, all in the span of a single heartbeat. A second pulse, faster and stronger than the first, came a heartbeat later.

Time stood still in the darkness as power leapt out of every pore of Ruari's copper-colored skin. He felt a flash of lightning, without seeing it; felt a peal of thunder though his ears were deaf. He died, he was sure of that, and was reborn in panic.

"Cave-in!"

Followed by the red-haired priest shouting, "I can't hold it!" from the front.

Other voices shouted out "Hamanu!" but there wasn't time or space to evoke the mighty sorcerer-king's aid.

Templars at the rear of the column surged forward, desperate to avoid one certain death, unmindful of the danger that lay ahead. Mahtra pushed Ruari, who pushed Pavek, who pushed the priest toward the dust-streaked light. Ruari stumbled against something that was not stone. His mind said the sergeant's body, and his feet refused to take the next necessary step. He lurched forward and would have gone down if Pavek hadn't yanked his arm hard enough to make the sinew snap. His foot came down where it had to, on something soft and silent. The next body was easier, the next easier still, and then he could see light streaming in from above.

Whatever Mahtra had done—Ruari assumed that she and her "protection" were responsible for the cave-in—it had destroyed the little building in the middle of the abattoir floor and any blue-green warding along with it. With Pavek leading, they emerged into a devastated area of the killing ground where stone, bone, and flesh had been reduced to fist-sized lumps. Smoke from the fires and dust from the cave-in made it difficult to see more than an arm's length, but they weren't alone, and they weren't among friends.

Ruari made certain Mahtra and Zvain were behind him, then unslung his staff as Codesh brawlers came out of the haze, poleaxes raised and swinging. He had no trouble blocking the blows—he was fast, and the wood of his new staff was stronger than any other wood he could name—but his body had to absorb the force of the heavy poleaxes. The force shocked his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders, and then his back, bone by bone, through his legs and into his feet before it dissipated in the ground. With each blocked blow, Ruari felt himself shrink, felt his own strength depleted.

There was no hope of landing a blow, not at that moment. He and the templars were surrounded. Those who were fighting could only defend—and pray that those who were evoking the Lion-King succeeded.

Desperate prayers seemed answered when two huge and slanting yellow eyes manifested in the haze. To a man, the Codeshites fell back, and the templars raised a chorus of requests for flaming swords, lightning bolts, enchantments, charms, and blessings. Ruari had all he'd ever want from the Lion of Urik already in his hands. He took advantage of the lull, striding forward to deliver a succession of quick thrusts and knocks with his staff's bronze finial. Three brawlers went down with bleeding heads before Ruari retreated to his original position; the last place he wanted to be was among the Codeshites when Lord Hamanu began granting spells.

The sulphur eyes narrowed to burning slits, focused on one man: Pavek, whose sword was already bloody and whose off-weapon hand held a plain, ceramic medallion.

A single, serpentine thread of radiant gold spun down from the Lion-King's eyes. It struck Pavek's hand with blinding light. When Ruari could see again, the hovering eyes were gone and Pavek was on his knees, doubled over, his sword discarded, clutching his off-weapon hand against his gut. The templars were horrified. They knew their master had abandoned them, though the Codeshites hadn't yet realized this and were still keeping their distance. That changed in a matter of heartbeats. The brawlers surged. Mahtra raced to Pavek's side; the burnished skin on her face and shoulders glowed as brightly as the Lion-King's eyes.

Her protection, Ruari thought. The force that had knocked him down in this same spot yesterday and collapsed the cavern passage behind them moments ago. At least I won't feel the axe that kills me.

But there was something else loose on the killing ground. Everyone felt it, Codeshites and templars alike. Everyone looked up in awe and fear, expecting the sorcerer-king to reappear. Everyone except Ruari, who knew what was happening, Pavek, who was making it happen, and Mahtra, whose eyes were glazed milky white, and whose peculiar magic would be their doom if he, Ruari, couldn't stop it.

He'd touched Mahtra once before when her skin was glowing; it had been the most unpleasant sensation of his life. But Pavek said she'd stopped herself because she felt him, Ruari, beside her.

If he could make her feel that again—?

It was all the hope Ruari had, and there was no time to think of anything better. He was beside her in one long-legged stride, had his arms around her and his lips close to her ear. The heat around her was excruciating. The charring flesh he smelled was undoubtedly his own.

"Mahtra! It's Ruari—don't do this! We're saved. I swear to you—Pavek's saved us." Dust and grit swirled around them. The ground shuddered, but not because of Mahtra. Wrapped tight around Ruari's shoulders and waist, her magic was fading, her arms were cooling with every throb of her pulse. He could feel her breath through the mask, two gentle gusts against his neck. Two gusts. In the midst of chaos, Ruari wondered what the mask concealed, but the thought, for the instant that it lasted, was curiosity, not disgust. Then his attention was drawn into the swirling dust.

And the guardian Pavek had raised through the packed dirt of the Codesh killing ground was an aspect like nothing Ruari had ever imagined.

It cleared the air inside the abattoir, sucking all the dust, the debris, the smoke, and even the flames into a semblance no taller than an elf, no burlier than a dwarf. But the ground shuddered when it took a ponderous step, and the air whistled when it slowly swung its arm. A Codesh brawler caught the force of its fist and flew in a great arc that ended on the other side of the wall, leaving her poleaxe behind. The semblance—it was not a guardian: guardians were real, but they had no substance; that was another axiom of druidry—armed itself with the axe and with its second swing took the heads of two more.

That sobered the Codeshite brawlers. The boldest among them attacked the semblance Pavek had summoned. They died for their bravery. The brightest surged toward Pavek, who had not risen from the ground. Ruari dived for his staff and regained his feet, ready to defend Pavek's life. The fighting was thrust and block, sweep and block, rhythm and reaction, as it had been before, with no time for thought until they'd beaten back the first Codeshite surge. Then there was time to breathe, time to notice who was standing and who had fallen.

Time to notice, through the now-clear air, the solid line of yellow-robed corpses hanged from the railing of their watchtower.

Until he had met Pavek, and for considerable time thereafter, Ruari would have cheered the hanging sight. He'd been conceived when his templar father had raped his elven mother, and he'd grown up believing the only good templar was a dead one. Even now he wouldn't want any of the men and women fighting beside him as friends, but he'd learned to see them as individuals within their yellow robes and understood their gasps and curses. He wasn't surprised when the war bureau survivors around raised their voices in an eerie, wailing war-cry, or that they pursued the Codeshites, who broke ranks and ran for the gate. What did surprise Ruari, though, was the four yellow-robed templars who stayed behind with him in a ring around Pavek, the red-haired priest, Mahtra, and Zvain.

The. guardian semblance Pavek had raised was slow but relentless. Nothing the Codeshite brawlers did wounded it or sapped its strength. The best they could do against it was defend, as Ruari defended with his staff against their poleaxes—and with the same effect. Though formed from insubstantial dust and debris, the semblance put the strength of the land in each of its blows. Mortal sinews couldn't withstand such force for long. The brawlers went down, one by one, until the critical moment came when those who were left comprehended that they wouldn't win, couldn't win, and stopped trying. They broke ranks and fled toward the gate—which was apparently the only way off the killing ground and which was where the fighting between Codeshites and templars remained thick.

Ruari took two strides in pursuit, then stopped when the semblance collapsed into a dusty rubbish heap. Two of his four templar allies kept going, but two stayed behind, panting hard, but aware that they were in danger as long as they were in Codesh, as long as Pavek remained senseless and slumped in the dirt.

Pavek's eyes were open when Ruari crouched beside him, and he groaned when, with Mahtra's help, Ruari eased him onto his side. Blood soaked the front of the fine, linen clothes the Lion-King had given him. Blood was on his arms and on his hands. Ruari feared the worst.

The priest knelt and took Pavek's left hand gently between his own. "It's his hand," the priest said, turning Pavek's hand to show Ruari what had happened when the medallion burst apart. "He'll lose it, but he'll live, if I can stop the bleeding."

Looking down at bone, sinew, and tattered flesh, Ruari's fear became cold nausea. He knelt beside the priest as much from weakness as from the desire to help.

"There's power here—"

"The power he himself raised?" The priest refused Ruari's offer with a shake of his head. "It's too riled, too angry. I wouldn't try—if I were you."

The priest was right. Ruari had no affinity for Pavek's guardian. This was Urik, in all its aspects: Pavek's roots, not his. But the red-haired priest was no healer. The only help he could offer was taking the remains of the leather thong that had held Pavek's medallion around his neck and tying it tight around Pavek's wrist instead.

Pavek opened his eyes and levered himself up on his right elbow. "If you want to do something useful, find Kakzim, instead." Between his old scar and the pain he was trying to hide, Pavek's smile was nothing any sane man would want see. "The bastard must be around here someplace."

Zvain, who'd been watching everything, pale and silent from the start, needed no additional encouragement. He was off like an arrow for the gallery where they'd seen Kakzim yesterday. Mahtra headed after him, but Kakzim was just a name to Ruari, and Pavek had lost a dangerous amount of blood.

"Go with them," Pavek urged. "Take your staff. Keep them out of trouble."

"You need a healer—bad."

"Not that bad."

"You've lost a lot of blood, Pavek. And—And your hand—it's bad, Pavek. You need a good healer. Kashi—"

Pavek shook his head. "Kakzim. Get me Kakzim."

"You'll be here when we bounce his halfling rump down those stairs?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

Ruari turned away from Pavek. He looked into the priest's blue eyes, asking silent questions.

"There's nothing more to do here," the priest replied. "I'll stay with him. We're well out of harm's way, and these two will stay—" He cocked his head toward the two templars who'd remained with them. "If anyone gets the bright idea to finish what they started before the great king comes to render judgment."

"The Lion closed his eyes," Ruari snarled and surged to his feet. He found himself angry at the sorcerer-king, and disappointed as well. "He's not coming."

"He'll come," Pavek assured him. "I'll wager you, he'll be here before the fighting's over. You've got to find Kakzim first."

By the screaming, shouting, and clash of arms, the fighting remained fierce around the abattoir gate. Ruari couldn't be certain, but he thought there might be more templars— perhaps Nunk and his companions, perhaps the other war bureau maniple—outside the gate, keeping the brawlers on the killing ground until the war bureau fighters finished their retribution. He could be certain that Pavek was safer right now with two templars and a priest watching over him than Mahtra and Zvain were, searching the gallery for Kakzim without weapons or sense.

"I'll be back before the Lion gets here," Ruari assured the group closest to him before running to the gallery stairway, staff in hand.

Finding Mahtra and Zvain was no more difficult than listening for Zvain's inventive swearing from the top of the charred but still serviceable stairway. Although the gallery appeared deserted, Ruari set himself silently against a door-jamb where he could see not only his friends ransacking a nearly empty room, but the rest of the gallery and killing ground where two templars stood similar watch over Pavek and the priest.

"Find anything?" Ruari asked, all innocence within the shadows.

Mahtra said, "No," with equal innocence, but Zvain leapt straight up and came down only a few shades darker than Mahtra.

"You scared me!" Zvain complained once he'd stopped sputtering curses.

Ruari countered with, "You'd be worse than scared if it weren't me standing here," and could almost hear Pavek saying the same thing. "You're damn fools, leaving the door open and making so much noise."

"I was listening," Mahtra said. "I would've seen trouble coming; I saw you. I would've protected—"

"What's to see? There's no one here!" Zvain interrupted. "He's scarpered. Packed up and left. Cut and run. Got out while the getting was still good—just like he did with dead-heart Escrissar."

Ruari's spirits sank. Pavek wanted Kakzim; not catching him was going to hurt Pavek more than losing his hand. "Is there anything here? Pavek..."

"Nothing!" Zvain said, kicking over a stool for emphasis. "Not a damn thing!"

"There's this—" Mahtra held out a chunk of what appeared to be tree bark.

"Garbage!" Zvain kicked the stool again.

Ruari left his staff leaning against the doorjamb and took Mahtra's offering. It was bark, though not from any tree that grew on the Tablelands. Holding it, feeling its texture with his fingers, he got a vision of countless trees and mountains wrapped in smoke like the Smoking Crown Volcano... no, mountains wrapped in clouds, like nothing he'd seen before.

Any other time, he'd cherish the bark simply for the vision it gave his druid spirit, but there was no time, and the bark was more than bark. Someone had covered it with straight black lines and other, irregular

"Writing," he mused aloud.

That gave him Zvain's swift attention. The boy grabbed the bark out of his hands. "Naw," he drawled, "that's not writing. I know writing when I see it; I can read—and there're no words here."

"I know writing, too," Ruari insisted, although he was better at recognizing its many forms than in reading any one of them. "There's writing here, halfling writing, I'll wager. And other things—"

"That's a mountain," Mahtra said, tapping the bark with a long, red fingernail. "And that's a tree—like the ones I saw where you live."

"It's a map!" Zvain exalted, jumping up and throwing the bark scrap into the air. "Kakzim left us a map!"

Ruari snatched the bark while it was still well above Zvain's head and gave him a clout behind the ear as well. "Don't be a kank-brained fool. Kakzim's not going to gather up everything else and leave a map behind."

"What's a map?" Mahtra asked.

"Directions for finding a place you've never been," Ruari answered quickly, not wanting to be rude to her.

"Then maybe he left it behind because he doesn't need it anymore."

Ruari closed his hand over Mahtra's. She was seven, younger than Zvain. She not only didn't know what a map was, she didn't understand at all the way a man's mind worked. "It's garbage, like Zvain said, or it's a trap."

"A trap?" she asked, freeing herself and taking the scrap from his hand to examine it closely.

She didn't understand, and Ruari was still ransacking his mind, searching for better words, when they heard, first, a gong clattering loudly and, second, a roar that belittled it to a tinkling cymbal.

"The Lion-King!" Zvain said as they all turned toward the sound, toward Codesh's outer gate.

"Pyreen preserve and protect!" Ruari took the bark map, rolled it quickly, and pushed it all the way up inside his shirt hem. "Is there anything else? Anything?"

Zvain said, "Absolutely nothing," and Mahtra shook her head.

Ruari grabbed his staff and headed for the killing ground with the other two close behind him.

The first thing Ruari noticed was that the templars and Codeshites were still fighting near the gate. The second was that they'd moved Pavek out of the sun.

Pavek was sitting on the ground with his back against one of the massive tables where the Codeshites turned carcasses into meat. His head was tilted to one side; he seemed to be resting, maybe sleeping. His face was a gray shade of pale, but Ruari wasn't concerned until he was close enough to see that Pavek's mangled left hand was inside a bucket. Water was excellent for washing a wound and keeping it clean, but submerging that bad an open wound was a good way to bleed a man to death.

"Damn you!" he shouted and, grasping his staff by its base, swung its bronzed lion end at the three men standing by while Pavek slowly died.

The nearest templar raised his sword to parry the staff. The templar could have attacked, could have slain Ruari, who was fighting with his heart, not his head, and his heart was breaking; but the yellow-robed warrior didn't take the easy slash or thrust. He parried the staff, beat it aside, closing the distance between them until he could loft a sandal-shod kick into Ruari's midsection. Catching the staff with one hand as it flew through the air, he tried to catch Ruari with the other.

Ruari dodged, and landed hard, flat on the ground an arm's length from Pavek. Ignoring the pain in his own gut, the half-elf crawled forward. He plucked the frayed leather thong out of the dirt, then tried to lift Pavek's hand out of the bucket.

"My choice," Pavek said, his voice so weak Ruari read the words on his lips more than he heard them with his ears.

The priest held onto Zvain—barely. The burnished skin on Mahtra's shoulders was glowing again, and her bird's-egg eyes were open so wide they seemed likely to fall out of her face.

"What's happening?" she demanded.

"He's killing himself!" Ruari shouted. "He's bleeding himself to death!"

"The king is coming," the priest said, as if that were an explanation.

Pavek asked, "You couldn't find Kakzim?" before Ruari could challenge the priest.

"No, he's scarpered," the half-elf admitted, shaking his head and turning his empty palms up. All the disappointment he'd dreaded showed in Pavek's eyes just before he closed them with a shrug, as if the big man had stayed alive this long only because he'd hoped his friends would be successful. Taking a painful breath, Ruari finished: "He got away clean, again. Didn't leave anything behind."

But Pavek raised his good hand and turned away. "No. No, I don't want to see it. Don't tell me about it. Just—Just get out of Codesh quickly. All three of you."

"Why?" Zvain, Mahtra, and Ruari demanded with a single voice.

Pavek looked up at the priest.

"Under necromancy, a dead man must tell the truth, but he can't reveal what he didn't know while he was alive."

"Necromancy?" Ruari said slowly, as the pieces began to fall into place. "Deadhearts? Hamanu?"

The templar who'd parried Ruari's staff nodded. "We kill our prisoners before we take them to the deadhearts. The dead don't suffer; they don't feel pain."

"They don't remember," the other templar corrected. "Everything stops when they die. They've got no present, no future; only the past."

"No."

"I can hope, Ru," Pavek said in his weak voice. "What good would I be anyway, Ru, without my right hand?"

"No," Ruari repeated, equally soft and weak.

"I raised a guardian, here—in Codesh, in his realm. He's not going to be happy, and he's not going to rest until he controls it or destroys it. I can't let him do that, and the only way I can stop him from trying... and succeeding is if I'm already a corpse when he finds me. It takes a druid to raise a guardian. The Lion-King's not a druid, Ru, and after I'm dead, I won't be either."

Another roar, louder than the first, warned them all that there wasn't much time.

"You can't raise it, Ru. I know that, and I know that you don't believe me when I tell you that—not truly—and that'll get you killed, if you don't get out of here... now."

Pavek spoke the truth: Ruari didn't believe that he couldn't raise the Urikite guardian, and the Lion-King would use that belief. He'd die trying to raise the wrong guardian, or he'd die the moment he succeeded. He had to leave, and take Zvain and Mahtra with him, but he put his arms around Pavek instead.

"I won't forget you," he gasped, trying to remain a man, trying not to cry.

"Go home and plant a tree for me. A big, ugly lump of a tree. And carve my name in its bark."

The tears came, as many as Ruari had ever shed for someone else. Zvain wormed in between them, silently demanding his moment, and getting it, before Ruari pulled him to his feet.

"Wait—" Pavek called, and Ruari dared to hope he'd changed his mind, but Pavek only wanted to give him the coin pouch from his belt and his most prized possession: a small steel-bladed knife snug in its sheath.

"Some of the scum have run toward that far corner," one of the templars said, pointing where he meant. "There must be a way out. We'll go with you as far as the village walls."

The priest said he'd stay to the end, in case Pavek needed a nudge "to separate his spirit from his body before the Lion-King got too close." He said he wasn't worried about Hamanu, and that was a lie—but maybe he'd lost everything he cared about when red-haired Ediyua went down in the passage.

Ruari didn't say good-bye, just took hold of Mahtra and Zvain and started walking fast to catch up with the templars who'd already left. He didn't look back, either.

Not once.

Not until they were clear of the Codesh walls.